Westropp — Fortified Headlands and Castles in Western Co. Cork. 26? 



Uladh, Cuchullin, who was commemorated ; but I heard of no legend of any 

 description purporting to explain the name. The arch was evidently far 

 wider even in 1841 (if the 0. S. map be reliable in details), but now much has 

 collapsed, and the little that remains, though eked out by a beam to one side, 

 is a " Brig of Dread," hardly a yard wide ; how the cattle grazing on the 

 " Island " are got across in safety is indeed a marvel. 



The site was one best suited for a promontory fort in the peninsula, and 

 as even the smallest coast spur, and even slight projections on the cliffs, were 

 walled for defence, the headland of Lemcon could hardly have been passed 

 over in early times. However, no Z/zm-narne is recorded, and nothing remains 

 of early work ; if such existed, the new work has overlaid and replaced it. 

 The neck or arch was defended by a mortar-built wall, with a gate-house a 

 little to the north of the passage. These are nearly hidden in bosses of 

 snowy campion and seapink. A wall and pier face the edge of the cliff 

 commanding the neck, and running so as to leave a narrow path aslope from 

 it to a gate-house. The northern gate-pier runs out beyond the line of works 

 to the actual edge, so that no one had foothold to pass it. To the south of 

 the gate is a small lodge for the porter, defaced, overgrown, and filled up. 

 The gate-piers and a few stones of the arch remain to either side. The gate 

 has a high sill or step. It is not improbable tbat a drawbridge was in use at 

 one time as at Leckbevune, Dursey, Dunluce, Dunowen, and elsewhere, but 

 whether it led from the gate-sill to a former pier on the landward edge of 

 the gully, or whether there was none, only the skew path to the natural arch, 

 I do not venture to assert. In Ballingarry Castle, Co. Kerry, there was no 

 access from the natural neck only by the drawbridge across the chasm ; the 

 same seems true also of Dunowen Castle, Co. Cork, and Leckbevune Castle in 

 Co. Kerry. 



The Black Castle stands on the highest point of the " Island," on a knoll 

 of rock. It closely resembles other peel towers in the district, such as 

 Dunanore and Dunmanus, or the Keep of Dunlough, but has no side turret 

 like the second. It measures 39 feet 6 inches by 27 feet 4 inches outside ; the 

 interior, 16 feet 6 inches by 27 feet 3 inches. It had two floors and an attic, 

 under a pointed vault, turned over wicker, and an upper room. The staircase 

 begins above the main door in the east wall, and was probably reached, as in 

 the similar castles, by a removable ladder, perhaps in a projecting building 

 or porch. The stairs rise southward up the wall straight to the south-east 

 angle. They open on the second floor by a large door, with a window-slit 

 opposite to it ; they then run straight up the south wall to the middle window 

 of the upper room. 



[42*] 



